


the time it takes to get from here to there

by dizzy



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 11:16:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1548599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris and Darren navigate intimacy. One-shot that follows <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1069514">Sing My Imperfect Offering</a>. Written for somethingdarrenish.</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://alittledizzy.tumblr.com/post/84382191205/the-time-it-takes-to-get-from-here-to-there-chris">Read/reblog on tumblr.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	the time it takes to get from here to there

Chris and Darren have separate bedrooms. They don't always use them, but they have them. 

Chris tried. He tried, he really did, but some nights the presence of another person beside him was just too suffocating. A week bled into two weeks and he began to spend more time at his computer desk during the night than he did anywhere else. 

Darren was confused at first. As understanding as he tries to be, sometimes his first assumption is still to question himself - has he done something wrong, has he made Chris mad. 

But he listens when Chris says it isn’t his fault, when Chris explains that this is just _how he is_. He shares more with Darren than he ever thought he’d have the capacity to share with anyone, but he can’t feel like he has to, all the time. He needs space for himself, for his quiet thoughts. He needs a place to escape to and a place he doesn’t have to share. 

They shop together online for a new bed for Darren, a _good_ one, and Chris calls open season on his credit card for whatever else Darren wants to decorate the room. Darren heatedly reassures Chris that he has nothing to make up for in between gleefully made purchases. 

Darren admits to him over lunch one day that he likes the arrangement. “It can be cool to just, you know, wake up with a song in my head and grab my guitar and not have to worry about waking you up.” 

Chris is more pleased with that than he is with Darren having agreed to the separate rooms in the first place. 

* 

“I’m going shopping. Need anything?” Darren swings around the door frame. He obviously hasn’t touched his bedhead and he’s wearing one of Chris’s t-shirts with shorts that don’t match at all. 

Chris doesn’t realize any of that. He doesn’t turn around from where he’s focused on his computer. 

“Get some of the salmon you made the other night,” Chris says. “And more-”  
“Diet Coke, yeah, I’m just gonna have them start delivering it in a freight truck. I think at this point a loading dock is a worthwhile investment for you and your habit.” 

Chris’s mouth twitches in a smile that’s involuntary at this point. “Fuck you.” 

“You will when I bring back six cases of that sweet Colfer nirvana!” Darren’s voice gets distant as he backs away. “Text me if you think of anything else you want.” 

*

Chris forgets sometimes that he has a _person_ now. 

He has a routine with The Cat. Feed it, give it a few minutes of attention a day, make sure it’s litter box stays relatively clean, check the water bowl. If he meets those minimum requirements, his duties as a pet owner are fulfilled. He can close the door to his writing room and forget The Cat exists for long stretches of time with no ill effect to either of them. 

Darren is not a cat. 

Darren is noisier. Darren can open a door Chris closes. Darren’s got words that can invade Chris’s thoughts. Darren also requires feeding and petting, but he demands other things, too: conversation, cuddles, physical touch. He wilts when Chris forgets to tend to him for too long at a time, and sometimes it leads to those kinds of conversation that Chris absolutely hates. 

Chris thinks he’s got more in common with The Cat than he does Darren most days. He wants to be shut inside a room with a door between himself and obligation. 

Sometimes he wants to forget Darren exists. Sometimes Darren feels like a weight around his neck. 

Sometimes he’s the weight around Darren’s neck. But Darren has the ability to open the door and walk out when he needs to, and Chris has never loved him more than when Darren makes that decision knowing it’s what they need at the moment. He’ll take a weekend at his parents house, go spend some time with his brother in New York, crash at a friend’s house. 

Between email and text messaging and photo apps, sometimes they talk more often when he’s gone then when they’re sharing the same space. Darren gets to have his noise and his laughter and his companionship, and he can come back home to Chris. 

* 

They watch movies together. They’re both a fan of film - emotional gutwrenchers, action flicks, idiotic comedies, high budget nostalgia blasts, indies with subtitles - they don’t love them all but they’re willing to watch them all. 

He loves watching things with Darren because it’s implied permission for a lot of things Chris wouldn’t normally just do on his own and wouldn’t always be receptive to. Darren knows that once they’re settled onto the couch or in bed together, that he doesn’t need to ask permission. He manhandles Chris with affection, and Chris soaks it up. Just for an hour or two his mind is engaged in a world of make believe on screen and his body is content right where it’s at. 

*

Sometimes Chris gets weird after sex. Sometimes it’s amazing, sweaty and enthusiastic and afterward he feels pleasantly drained, the way he thinks he’s supposed to feel. Sometimes it leaves him restless and energized in counterproductive ways. Sometimes he gets too into himself and too focused and worries start to pile on and sex doesn’t work at all. 

He loves that Darren wants him. He loves that his body turns Darren on. Darren certainly turns him on. There might be a few things that he doesn't enjoy as much as others, but Darren has his preferences, too. The orgasm, the act of sex, is not a problem. The problem is that for Chris and Darren, it’s more than two bodies finding basic pleasure - it’s love, it’s kissing, it’s transference and expression of emotion, and sometimes… sometimes it’s just too much for Chris. 

He’s afraid that one day Darren will realize that that what Chris can offer him in bed isn’t enough. 

“Fuck that,” Darren says, one night when Chris tells him that. “You can go to your favorite burger joint and get your favorite burger every Thursday and the burger can be fucking identical every week, but you show up one Thursday already full and it’s not gonna be as good. Or maybe your stomach’s all grumpy and a burger just totally isn’t what you need. That doesn’t mean anything’s wrong with the _burger_ , or that you don’t like it anymore. You can go back the next week and it’s back to being the best burger ever..” 

Chris is thoroughly confused. “What?” 

“I’m the burger,” Darren clarifies. 

Badly. 

“What?” Chris asks again. 

“I mean.” Darren laughs, rubs his eyes, rolls over to face Chris. “I mean, you get weird about it when we’ve fooled around a few nights in a row. I think it just means sometimes you’re all full up on the sexin’.” 

Chris has a clever mind, and though it unsettles him he thinks he gets what Darren is saying. It’s just not a concept that had occurred to him. 

“You don’t - mind?” Chris asks, haltingly. “If sometimes I just…” 

Darren leans over and gives him a kiss on the cheek. “As long as you don’t mind me being a faithful devotee of the world of internet pornography, then we’re all good.” 

* 

They garden. 

It’s not something Chris would ever have expected he’d like, but it becomes a highlight of his day. Maybe it’s because they started it on the flush of a new relationship, when things were brighter and shinier all around until it settled into normality. When he looks at the bright grass and the beds of flowers, the vegetables pushing up from the ground, the lush vibrant _life_ he and Darren cultivated together and he feels that giddy surge inside of him that reminds him of those early days. 

But it’s also more. It’s the way it feels to dig his hand into cool soil and the sweat and the way Darren looks in the shower afterward, brown swirling at their feet and his scent sticky on both of their skin. He enjoys the monotony of tending and pulling weeds and packing the dirt and his research-oriented mind loves having a new thing to educate himself on. 

“I love that you love this,” Darren says to him, on one of the long afternoons they spend outside. 

Chris just shrugs. “I love that you showed me how.” 

*

It becomes _their house_ not _Chris’s house_. 

It happens over months, a change that creeps in just subtly enough that Chris mostly doesn’t mind it. 

It just catches him off guard once in a while. He used to be able to navigate his house in the dark without a single misstep. Now there are shoes in places he didn’t put them, a table shifted over a few inches. In the light of day with sleep on his side and Darren’s presence to temper and calm him, Chris might actually admit he likes some of the change. 

At night with a bruise blossoming on his shin and tightness banding around his chest, he just wants all the stupid shit that _doesn’t belong_ gone. 

“Y’okay?” Darren asks, voice muzzy with sleep. He flips the light on and the sight of him there, wearing only boxer briefs, stubble on his face. 

“No,” he snaps, thigh throbbing. “Just get-” 

Chris is suddenly shaking with barely restrained words. It’s not panic, it’s not anxiety, at least not in any way he’s ever had to identify before. His years of therapy jump-start a process in his head - what’s the root, what’s the cause, why do I feel this way - but it’s a drop in the swirling tumultuous waters of his mind. 

But he bites back on the impulse. He knows some words have the power to break things. He knows it because he uses those words liberally, with characters in stories. He breaks them and he builds them back together in imperfect ways. If he breaks Darren he can’t just put him back together, though. Darren isn’t someone whose words or thoughts or actions he can control. 

If he breaks Darren with words Darren will break him by leaving. 

He turns and walks into his bedroom and slams the door shut. He gets no rest, though. He sits with his back to the wall and his eyes closed, pacing his breathing, for close to an hour. 

Then he gets to his feet and walks to Darren’s bedroom. Chris is rarely in here. Either he invites Darren to sleep with him, or they sleep apart. 

This isn’t a room he controlled, so he pretends it doesn’t exist. He’s so, so aware of how fucked up that is. 

Darren’s obviously awake. There’s no light on, but this room is lit softly by a street lamp outside. Darren’s sitting up on the bed. 

“Chris?” Darren’s voice sounds jagged and rough with emotion. “I don’t know what I did-” 

“Nothing,” Chris says, and toes off the slippers he was wearing. He reaches down and straightens them against the wall by the door and then walks across to Darren’s bed and crawls into it. He lays on the bed and puts his head in Darren’s lap and grabs his hand, squeezing it tightly. “Can we talk about it tomorrow?” 

“Yeah, of course.” Darren bends impossibly low to kiss Chris’s forehead. When he sits back up, his fingers go to Chris’s hair, stroking it in soft calming passes of his fingertips. 

In the morning they’ll either talk about it, or they won’t. Chris knows this is one of those problems that’s really more his to work out than theirs, but Darren’s the one by his side and Chris knows that Darren _wants_ to be a part of this. Darren fights for them, even when he’s not sure how, and that chokes Chris with emotion when he makes himself remember it. 

Darren starts to hum and his fingers still, a heavy reassuring weight against Chris’s scalp. 

After a while, Chris falls asleep.


End file.
